A curry is any of a variety of distinctively spiced dishes, best-known in Indian, Thai and other South Asian cuisines, but curry has been adopted into all of the mainstream cuisines of the Asia-Pacific area. Along with tea, curry is one of the few dishes or drinks that is truly "pan-Asian", but specifically, its roots come from India. Curry was later brought to the West by British colonialists in India from the 18th century.